Stylus health and traktor’s scope view
Is it possible to determine the health of your stylus based on feedback from traktor? I’ll post a few screen shots and I’d love to see what others’ look like and if anyone can “read the tea leaves” (these are all ortofon pro-s needles, except for one, the one scope view with higher volume than the others is a brand new shure m44)
The “tea leaves” show you are going to live a long and healthy life.
They are fine. They look as they should do. The Scope is perfect. The Timecode Signal Quality is perfect.
What soundcard &/or mixer are you using..? The Headroom level will be set to -3db (cannot be changed) if in external mode which is why the headroom meter (the blue meter) is low. You are getting a slightly higher output from the Shure hence a small increase in output.
I am using an audio 6 with an allen and heath xone 22… my main concern was that the output from the needles in pictures 2 and 5 seemed extremely low and made me wonder if those needles were past their usability. I am a house/techno/disco dj so I mainly backcue a bit not scratch, for what thats worth.
as far as i can tell, the needles all seem to give roughly the same amount of loudness when i just listen to them with regular records or watch the meter on the mixer… I figured for whatever reason traktor could pick up details in the signal better than my ears
just trying to stay on top of this stuff so I don’t cause unnecessary wear on my records :\
Your all good. The Headroom Meter (in blue) is low because the headroom setting in Traktor is set to -3db. This is to prevent clipping.
Clipping occurs after -0db is reached and this is not good.
The blue meter is just reflecting the headroom setting not the output of your needles.
Remember with timecode your needles are not picking up an audio signal output. They are detecting a timecode signal. As long as the timecode signal is good, your needles are good.
Awesome. I never knew that the Blue ring represents the headroom setting… 
Cheers Karlos.
Ah yeah not the blue ring dude. The small blue meter under the orange ‘Timecode Signal Strength’ meter on the right side.
The rings are calibration circles showing the quality of the calibration and the wow and flutter (I think).
Gotcha.